Being Human
by earthy4
Summary: “How many times do I have to tell you, Rose? I’m not human.”


**title: **Being Human

**writing time: **45 mins.

**characters: **Rose, Doc #9

**notes: **Sometime post-01x03 ("The Unquiet Dead"). A little Rose x 9. Some bad words. As much as I love them, these characters are not mine, please don't sue me for my fangirly love, etc. etc. etc.

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"But that – that's not even –"

"Not even what?" he demanded. "Not even human? How many times do I have to tell you, Rose? I'm _not human_."

She forgot that sometimes because listening to him laugh about stupid little things or seeing the way he rushed off into the face of danger to protect a complete stranger made her think of him as a sort of a hero. But then, heroes weren't always human, were they? They were more than human. They were superhuman.

And the Doctor wasn't. Not by a long shot.

"Yeah," she said, "I get it; you're not human. You're _less _than human. You'd let the Gelf walk around in dead human beings –"

"We still on that? Look, I didn't _want _her to die –"

"No, but you weren't really going about saving her, were you? And no proper human bloke would think a girl'd want to see the end of the world on a first date. What's that supposed to be, impressive? Watching the world I grew up on explode into a million pieces?"

He scratched his head. "Actually, it was probably more like a few billion –"

"Oh, and I didn't even get to see it, did I, since I was too busy nearly getting fried to death."

"And if I'da been human you would've burned with your planet, Rose Tyler, and so would everyone else on that ship. It took a Time Lord to –"

"Yeah, so what's so great about a Time Lord, anyway?" Rose said. "You act all high an' mighty, like you own the universe, traveling around in your little blue box and passing judgment on everything. What gives you the right? There some sort of ancient text that says something like, 'And the Time Lords will travel around acting like they know better than anyone else because all they're good for is being a right pain in the ass'?"

The Doctor looked at her, arms folded over his chest, eyes inscrutable, before he turned away from her to face the console. "That's why I don't do this," he said.

Rose frowned. "Do what?"

"Domestic." He waved a hand. "Human beings. You let your emotions get everywhere, make a real mess, and then act all surprised when things need cleaning up. You want reasons, you want things explained, you want your hands held and your noses wiped and your thinking done for you."

Rose snorted. "Well that's a load of rubbish. I don't want any of that – wiped noses or hands held – and I can think for myself, thank you very much." She narrowed her eyes at his back. "But I get it," she added.

That got him to turn around. "Get what?"

Rose mirrored his arms-crossed, take-no-prisoners stance. "That 'no domestic' thing is bullshit and you know it. You're not upset with humanity; you're jealous of it."

He stared at her, then laughed humorlessly. "What's that supposed to mean?"

Rose circled the console, keeping her eyes on him all the time. "Humans feel," she said. "We get all wrapped up in our little lives, and we get sad about things like death and happy about things like love, and yeah, it's messy, but we're in it because that's who we are and what we do." She smirked at him. "You, though, you play like you're outside the whole thing, like you're some sort of observer, because that keeps you safe from having to actually _feel _anything."

His eyes were instantly cold, and she could actually feel a shiver down her spine looking at him. His voice was ice. "You think I don't feel anything?" he said. "After everything I told you about who I am and what I've done – all the people who've died because of me – you think I don't feel that every second of every minute of every hour of every day? I remember everything I've ever felt for every person I've ever disappointed in nine hundred years, and I have a damned good memory."

Some feelings must be universal, Rose thought after she was done being taken aback. She knew the Doctor couldn't have cared less about saving Mickey or about preserving the dignity of the Victorian dead, but whenever that got her thinking about how heartless and alien he was, he'd laugh at his own stupid joke or talk about the planet he couldn't save, and she would see that delight or that pain in his face and think, Well, there's a bit of human in him after all.

"There's more to feel than guilt," she told him quietly. And then, because she obviously hadn't got a care in the world for her own personal safety in the face of an angry Time Lord, she walked right up to him and took his hand in hers.

He looked down at her sharply, obviously before he was quite ready to, because Rose thought she saw something like tears in his eyes. He looked at his hand in hers, like he couldn't see how it'd gotten there, and then he was hugging her hard, and she pressed her face against his stupid leather jacket, hearing his hearts beating, and figuring, all things considered, it wasn't too bad an end to an argument, even if it didn't really solve anything.


End file.
